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Comment by hypervisorxxx | Hacker News Reader

The most interesting pardons are the no name ones. Pardoned restaurant chain fraud for an italian not even charged in NY. Sounds like mafia related crime to me.

The other no name money laundering criminals are all related to either his gambling businesses or his place of living in Florida.

He's basically pardoning people he's been doing crimes with for a long time and then if course some big names.

I'm happy to see some rappers pardoned though tbh. Their music has influenced my life, they've done great deal of good outside of music and none of them were in the can for things like harming women or animals etc.

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IMO it was Lil Wayne's verse criticising Bush that earned him the pardon:

"I gotta bring the hood back after Katrina / Weezy F Baby now the F is for FEMA"

There were some deserving pardons here...

"The CAN-DO Foundation thanks President Trump for providing a second chance to numerous deserving individuals through the use of his Executive Clemency powers. Many defendants that receive draconian sentences are individuals who exercised their Sixth Amendment right to a trial and suffered the trial penalty phase by receiving harsh mandatory sentences many times greater than if they had taken a plea. These sentences were often based primarily on the testimony of other co-conspirators who received sentence reductions once they testified and were in many cases far more culpable. Executive clemency represented the last hope for many of these individuals to have a second chance at life since (with limited exceptions) there is no federal parole."

https://www.candoclemency.com/can-do-thanks-president-trump-...

They were pardoned because they paid Trump campaign favors, putting his corrupt administration and their own self interest over the good of a nation in crisis. That's far worse than their original crimes.

Many pardons are recommended to the President by the Justice department for various reasons. A lot are for non-violent drug crimes that someone in the department felt was too harsh/etc...

It's not like they are all Trump's friends. But obviously conspiracy theories will prevail, sadly.

The "conspiracy theories" were in Trump's pardon documents, like the "Russia hoax".

You must have missed the declass on the origins of the Russia hoax, where Steele admitted that he intentionally leaked information and engaged in info-laundering because he saw Trump as being potentially damaging to UK/US relations.

And where he admits that he leaked info in order to counter the effect of Hillary's emails on the 2016 election. So, literal foreign interference in an election.

You may have also missed the declass that showed Fiona Hill perjured herself when she stated she had no idea who Christopher Steele was- yet actually met with him while he was compiling his dossier.

Nobody was convicted on the basis of Steele's dossier.

>Many pardons are recommended to the President by the Justice department for various reasons

Most Trump's pardons bypassed DOJ.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/trumps-circumvention-justice-dep...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/most-clemency-...

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